


The Story Of Clementine Quinn

by tahitianmangoes



Series: The Adventures of Clementine Quinn [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Death, Murder, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Racism, Racism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:40:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29851305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahitianmangoes/pseuds/tahitianmangoes
Summary: The [condensed] backstory of Clementine Quinn
Series: The Adventures of Clementine Quinn [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882603





	The Story Of Clementine Quinn

Zhang Xiaomeng was nineteen when he came to America from Harbin in China looking for a better life. He had heard of the promise of the Golden Mountain and hoped to work enough to get his family out of the debt that his own father had put them in through his drink and gambling addictions.

Xiaomeng arrived at Angel Island after a long and treacherous boat ride with many other Chinese, Japanese and Filipinos only to find that America wasn’t a land of freedom, nor was it paved with gold… At least not for him and other non whites.

Americans wanted cheap Chinese labour to do the jobs they would never dream of doing, so he began working just outside of Annesburg building a railway with other Asian immigrants.

The labour was backbreaking and many of his friends collapsed due to exhaustion and malnutrition. Some ran away but if caught, they would be beaten and not be permitted food or water as a punishment. Xiaomeng saw many of his friends die. It hardened him. He realised that the life he had chosen here had been a lie.

Determined to live, he took his opportunity to escape one night when the guards were drunk and ran away to Saint Denis. There had to be more to life here than building railroads. 

Xiaomeng hoped that Saint Denis would be different and in many ways it was. He was able to find lodgings with other Chinese people and made friends. But the fear, segregation and racism hadn’t gone away. With American swept away in an ocean of yellow peril, Xiaomeng would often find himself being chased or attacked in the street with no one batting an eyelid.  
Chinese people who owned businesses had them burnt down and it was common for someone to not return home and never be seen again. 

Xiaomeng had made friends with a young Chinese man who worked washing pots in a restaurant but one day, he stopped showing up for work.  
Xiomeng found that there was little use going to the police for help. They didn’t care about the likes of Xioming and other immigrants; they made fun of his broken English and thick Chinese accent and told him to get out before they threw him in a cell. 

Saint Denis is where Xiomeng met Clementine’s mother.

He was able to find work in a general store whose owner took pity on the poor immigrant boy. Xiaomeng promised he would work harder than any white person the owner had ever employed and he made good on his promise. Xiaomeng did everything from cleaning the store and the storefront, riding out to get supplies, making sure the shelves were always full and appealing and delivering goods in and around Saint Denis to customers. 

Elizabeth Quinn, the daughter of a wealthy Irish-American family who owned properties in Saint Denis and Blackwater.

Elizabeth was sheltered and inexperienced, never having left Saint Denis. She grew up with a governess and was distant with her parents whom she didn’t see too often. By the time she was eighteen, her family had made an agreement with another family in Blackwater who had an unmarried son of thirty-three named Lewis Clark. The Clark family had made their money in the cotton trade but now owned a mining company in Annesburg.

Elizabeth had never met Lewis. She hated the idea that she wasn’t marrying for love and was marrying a man who was almost double her age. It was a transaction and she wasn’t an item to be sold.

The arrangement was purely monetary; Elizabeth’s father would allow Lewis to marry his only daughter in exchange for partnership in the mining business and other business ventures in Blackwater.

Elizabeth met Xiaomeng when he began delivering goods from the general store to her home a few times a week. 

She was struck by how handsome he was, he was lean from the manual labour. His jet black hair was worn long but tied back so that Elizabeth could see his face, his skin a golden brown and his eyes a shimmering amber. 

She had never really met anyone from outside the house before other than the people who were invited around for her parents parties but none of them looked like Xiaomeng .

Xiaomeng was also struck by Elizabeth’s beauty. Elizabeth had long red hair and bright blue eyes, she was slender and graceful - beauty without contrivity. 

Xiomeng was so enraptured by her that he dropped everything he was carrying when he first saw her in the gardens as he made his way to the back door where the kitchens were. Glass shattered and the contents spilled all over the floor causing a commotion. Elizabeth stepped in and took the blame, knowing that Xiaomeng would be punished harshly if she told the truth.

Xiaomeng had a kind smile and while he didn’t speak English well and Elizabeth didn’t know a word of Chinese, there was most definitely something between them that neither of them could explain, like the world was pushing them together.

Elizabeth made sure she was always in the garden for when Xiaomeng came with his delivery. 

The pair started a secret relationship, Xiaomeng would slip Elizabeth little notes that the wife of the general store owner would help him compose and Elizabeth would write letters in return that she spritzed with her perfume. Xiaomeng kept all of the letters, the only thing that had any value to him in this world.

On Xiaomeng notes, he would tell Elizabeth when he days off were and Elizabeth would meet him in town. Many places wouldn’t let Xiaomeng in, so they would walk to the edge of Saint Denis by the water and talk. Sometimes, they would go back to Xiomeng’s house which was usually empty during the day but sometimes, the other people he shared with were there and Elizabeth soon became friends with them.

Neither Xiomeng or Elizabeth understood the other too well to begin with but with but love has its own language.

Soon, Elizabeth fell pregnant. The pair knew they didn’t have long to figure out what to do - the engagement to Lewis was to be announced soon.  
Xiaomeng wanted to run away with Elizabeth; he promised her he would always take care of her and their baby, no matter what: they’d get married and live happily. But both knew that with the exclusion act, they would never be allowed to marry or live any sort of normal life.

Maybe it had all just been a silly dream which was rapidly turning into a nightmare…

Elizabeth began to show, despite trying to cover her bump with baggier clothes but it was fruitless; one of the men who worked for Elizabeth’s father had seen Elizabeth with Xiaomeng in town one day. 

The word got to her father who flew into a rage. Still worried about his business plans, he tried to arrange for a doctor to “take care of things” but by this time, word had reached Lewis Clark and his family in Blackwater and the engagement was promptly called off.

Elizabeth pleaded with her father but he went to the store where Xiaomeng worked with some of his men, dragging him into the street by his hair and proceeded to beat him in front of everyone saying that this filthy chinaman, this filthy dog had defiled his daughter and ruined his business. Xiaomeng couldn’t fight back, he was outnumbered and no one would step in to help - he knew that.

They kept beating and beating until the dusty road turned crimson and Xiaomeng’s handsome face was no longer recognisable. He crumpled lifelessly to the floor where he lay motionless, Elizabeth’s father didn’t stop, he stamped on Xiaomeng’s head until there was a sickening crack and then silence.

The crowd quietened and soon dispersed, leaving only Elizabeth at the foul scene, howling and weeping for her one true love. 

Elizabeth knew she had to leave. She was terrified that when the baby came, her family would take it away from her - her last part of Xiaomeng.

Clementine was born in 1873 somewhere in Tall Trees where she had a fairly happy childhood. She liked nature and animals, Elizabeth doted on her and they spent many happy days in their small homestead not too far from a dam where they would fish. Elizabeth would sell the fish in Strawberry, it didn’t pay a lot but it kept them clothed and fed. 

When Clementine was thirteen, Elizabeth became ill. Dysentery. She told Clementine to go to a woman she had met in Strawberry who would take care of her - when Elizabeth was better, Clementine could come back. Only Elizabeth didn’t get better and she knew she never would.

Clementine never saw her mother again.

Clementine went to Strawberry to find the woman whose name was Miss Burgess. Miss Burgess was in her sixties or so and was a mean woman. Clementine worked for her for a while cleaning houses owned by rich, fancy folk. It was hard work and Clementine barely saw a penny once Miss Burgess had taken her share. 

Clementine shared a room with several other girls and boys around the same age who all worked for Miss Burgess. Clementine didn’t make any friends in that time and remembered crying herself to sleep many nights on the itchy bedroll she slept on on the cold floor of that room.

By the time she turned fourteen, Miss Burgess decided to sell Clementine to a wealthy man who was looking for a girl to live with him, take care of the house and such...

Elizabeth had raised Clementine to be vigilant and never to really trust anyone. Clementine knew what the man’s intentions were and when she arrived at his impressive house outside of Blackwater.  
He wasn’t all that old, perhaps thirty or so but his parents had died and left him the property and a lot of money. 

Clementine was to cook and clean for him. She felt uncomfortable in his presence, his eyes lingered too long on her and he would make excuses to touch her on the shoulder or small of the back.

It didn’t take long for him to call her to his study. He asked her to sit in his lap and although she didn’t want to, although she knew she shouldn’t, before she knew it, he was pulling her towards him and sitting her down on him.

He made advances on her, telling her that she was pretty and mature for her age and he could make her a woman, hands roaming her body while a prickly wave of sickness crashed over her. 

She felt his horrible, hot lips on her neck. As he did this, Clementine seemed to go into autopilot. She saw a glint of sliver on his desk, a letter opener. Before she could think, she had grabbed it and stabbed him in the neck, driving the blade to the hilt.  
She watched him clutch uselessly at his throat as he gasped for air. When he stopped breathing, Clementine looted the house of everything she could sell and left for Saint Denis, the place her mother hated so much.

She thought she would feel something by killing him: fear, excitement or disgust? She felt nothing. 

****

Clementine hoped to find herself in Saint Denis but all she found was crowded streets and people who didn’t care, especially for someone who looked like her; her curly red hair was enough at first glance for people to mistake her for white but her small mono-lidded eyes, tanned skin and flat nose gave her away as impure.

Too white for other Chinese people but too Chinese for white people - Clementine has never been accepted anywhere.

She eventually fell in with a group of street kids who initially tried to pickpocket her but she had fought them off with relative ease, leaving one with a broken nose and a bruised ego. For some reason, they took a shine to her and taught her how to pickpocket, where to run and hide from the law and most importantly, how to make friends. 

She became close with an Irish boy named Oliver who joined the gang not too long before her. Clementine didn’t know love but knew that when she was with him, the world made sense and the anger that seethed inside of her settled. She was… happy, just like she’d been with her mother.

Oliver was a year older than her and a good hear or two taller. Lanky with a gap between his two front teeth and freckles across his nose. He probably cared more for Clementine than Clementine cared for him and he would be the first to admit that but that was ok. It was the innocent kind of love that only young teens were capable of having. 

Oliver flushed redder than the paint of a pillar box when Clementine allowed him to hold her hand as they walked the streets together. 

Oliver stole clothes and jewellery for her but Clementine has never cared about her appearance or expensive gifts. She liked having someone to talk before she went to sleep at night and she liked knowing that he would be there again in the morning. She found that sharing things was nice. She wanted to share everything with Oliver. 

The small amount of money she had went towards her horse, a gorgeous chestnut red Turkoman who she had spent months and months saving for and when she produced the right amount of notes at the stable, the stablemaster had all but fallen over in surprise.  
The horse was her most loyal friend. Clementine loved animals and often fed the stray cats and dogs of Saint Denis, much to the disdain of others. Clementine felt calm amongst the animals, almost as if they understood her better than any human ever could. Maybe one day, her and Oliver would own a farm or stables together. 

Clementine stayed with the gang until she was seventeen. 

Oliver hadn’t been seen for a few days, which wasn’t unusual if he had found work somewhere so Clementine didn’t worry too much. Oliver knew how to take care of himself; he was able to think on his feet and he was able to talk himself out of almost any situation.  
One afternoon when Clementine was wandering aimlessly through the overcrowded streets, she noticed a gathering at the park. As she edged closer to see what was happening, she saw that there was another public hanging.

Although Clementine had killed before, public hangings made her sick - to think that people came out to watch someone die was horrific. 

Her blood ran cold, however, as she recognised one of the men standing on the gallows, that befreckled skinny boy. Oliver. He’d been caught rustling cattle. She did her best to fight through the crowd towards him, pushing people out of her way and despite her strength, she was still small of stature and couldn’t reach the front.

She heard the door open, heard the rope unravel and heard Oliver choke out his last few breaths. When she reached the front, she saw that while his body was limp, his eyes were still open. She wondered if he had seen her.

****

In 1898, Clementine Quinn is now 25.   
She left Saint Denis soon after Oliver was hung and now she travels from place to place, trying to make sense of the world. 

She met a beautiful woman named Madam Nazar who buys trinkets and interesting objects that Clementine acquires on her journeys. She recently started helping an older woman named Maggie Fike with a moonshine business - it’s dangerous work with revenue agents at every corner but Clementine doesn’t mind. 

She hates this country; the country that looks on while others suffer or condemns people for the colour of their skin. Maybe one day she’ll leave and start again somewhere new.

Since leaving Saint Denis, she’s been a loner and a wanderer. She’s found that other people can’t be trusted and will almost always use you in the end. And getting close to people only complicates things... She always leaves before it gets to that point.  
Maybe that makes her selfish but she doesn’t care. The world has never shown her any mercy so why should she show mercy to the world?


End file.
